|
Working
Paper Series:
99.23
Rethinking the Rational Foundations of Supranational Governance: Lessons from the North American Free Trade Agreement
Lloyd Gruber
Abstract:
Why do states frequently act through supranational institutions, and why do these institutions look the way they do? While most studies emphasize the collective-gains rationale for delegated authority, the analysis presented here raises an altogether different possibility. What makes supranational dispute resolution systems, collective decision-making bodies, and the like so attractive is not -- at least not necessarily -- that they contribute to the overall efficiency of cooperation. Rather, I suggest, it is that they afford provide these regimes' "enacting coalitions" with a readily available means of moderating the high costs that cooperation imposes upon their domestic successors, thereby making these successors' continued participation in the regime somewhat less onerous than it might otherwise be. In this way, supranational institutions discourage the beneficiaries of cooperation -- but also, more importantly, the actors who do not benefit -- from working to subvert the new (cooperative) status quo shou
The complete
document may be downloaded or viewed using Adobe
Acrobat Reader. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat
Reader, you can download
it from Adobe.
Research Summary
http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/publications/rs/1-9.html
|
